The following comes from Tracy Rosenberg's Pacifica in Exile newsletter:
Berkeley-In response to a March 2014 complaint from 8 former board members who served on the Pacifica National Board between 2008 and 2013, the Registry of Charitable Trusts, the division of the California AG that supervises California nonprofit organizations, has launched a comprehensive audit of Pacifica Radio's accounting and compliance functions. The scope of the initial document request is broad and encompasses most financial records from the past five years of operations. (see list below).
The Attorney General defines their charity oversight purpose as: The Attorney General regulates charities and the professional fundraisers who solicit on their behalf. The purpose of this oversight is to protect charitable assets for their intended use and ensure that the charitable donations contributed by Californians are not misapplied and squandered through fraud or other means.
ADDENDUM:
I am among those barred from expressing myself on R. Paul Martin's Blueboard, but I can read it. There is very little activity in that once so trafficked forum, but the upcoming Pacifica audit made it in there today (Saturday, Dec. 27), R. Paul is, after all the local WBAI board's Treasurer, and he has been rather outspoken in his criticism of the station's bunker group. Today, Indigopirate offered Mr. Martin this advice:
"You very much need to contact the authorities with respect to your role, and you need to do it now."
Noting that he "may at some point be in touch with them," Martin went on to say, perhaps naïvely, that he expects to be regarded as "just a spectator."
SDL made the following observation:
"You can't keep a scam going on forever without pissing off some people who will do something about it. I have a feeling we shall see a snowball effect that will roll over WBAI."To which R. Paul replied:
"Well, something like this audit was inevitable, IMO. And I do wonder if the California Attorney General's Office is going to look at the content of the premiums. I think that they're mostly going to look at the accounting, including the people who are complaining about not getting the premiums that they'd paid for. I reported about the company that handles WBAI's credit card payments not forwarding the money for the first week or so of the Fall 'thon because of charge backs that resulted from such complaints. That might factor into the AG's audit.
"Anyway, there's a lot to look at throughout Pacifica. And I wonder if the final result of the California Attorney General's Office audit will raise any eyebrows at the FCC? If there's some really bad stuff discovered that would affect Pacifica's relationship with the FCC.
Quite a few people in Pacifica have been behaving as if they didn't have to be concerned about silly things like laws for quite some time. Maybe reality is about to assert itself.
Of course we could also see this entire audit just go away due to some political influence or something. Wouldn't be the first time."
Given the shambolic state of Pacifica as well as each and every of the individual stations I should think this will pose something of a challenge.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the question, if serious impropriety and/or illegality is found to have occurred as to the exposure of management as well as individual board members.
~ 'indigopirate'
Saw this on the Pacifica Waves Petty Bickering list. Is the gig up? Is this serious? Can the clows even provide all the requested documentation? Will there be a spillover effect onto WBAI? We shall see.
ReplyDeleteI have said for a while now about the authorities getting involved. Guess it has come to pass. They got Jim Bakker, after all...
SDL
Will Margie make a convincing Tammy Fay?
DeleteSeriously, I don't think they can audit Pacifica without taking a good look at its stations, so Reimers had better renew his passport. Those books must be a tangled mess with many transactions unrecorded.
High time for these opportunistic vandals to face the undesired consequences of their actions and inactions. I would find all this more upsetting if it were not for the fact that rigor mortis has already set in at WBAI.
I'll help 'em get a head start, with lyrics to Parchman Farm...
DeleteWell I'm sittin' over here on Parchman Farm
Well I'm sittin' over here on Parchman Farm
Well I'm sittin' over here on Parchman Farm
And I ain't never done no man no harm
Well I'm puttin' that cotton in an eleven foot sack
Well I'm puttin' that cotton in an eleven foot sack
Well I'm puttin' that cotton in an eleven foot sack
With a twelve guage shotgun at my back
I'm sittin' over here on Number Nine
I'm sittin' over here on Number Nine
Well I'm sittin' over here on Number Nine
And all I did was drink my wine
Well I'm gonna be here for the rest of my life
I'm gonna be on this farm for my natural life
Well I'm a gonna be here for the rest of my life
And all I did was shoot my wife
I'm sittin' over here on Parchman Farm
SDL
If I were in R Paul’s position I’d approach the CA AG’s and the NYS AG’s office, if not via an attorney then at the very least in writing, on the record, and give them a sense of my knowledge and concerns, and I’d do it sooner rather than later.
ReplyDeleteThis may blow away and come to nothing, as some are earnestly hoping, or it very well may not.
When things begin to unravel, the final unravelling sometimes comes rather swiftly.
Will it? Who knows? I don’t. Nor will I pretend to know.
The thing is, from my perspective, if one were in R Paul’s position, at this point it would be in my judgement not only the prudent thing to approach the CA AG and the NYS AG with my concerns, far more importantly it would be the only morally acceptable thing to do.
Perhaps that’s only me.
~ ‘indigo, pirate’
No, Indigo, it is not only you. I think you advice to R. Paul shows good judgement, which is something not easily found at WBAI/Pacifica.As you say, it may blow away, but it may also inspire others to come forward.
DeleteThere *is* a bright side to all this: I showed the list of documentation required by the CA AG to a friend and she immediately dissolved into hysterical laughter, in a series of laughing fits lasting for literally twenty minutes. She'd look at it, laugh until she was short of breath, put it down, look at it again, and again dissolve into laughter.
DeleteProof: Pacifica *does* have entertainment value.
~ 'indigopirate'
Yes, Pacifica is hilarious. Where else would a host claim deep knowledge of a prison warden's duties, because he had played one in a musical sixty years ago? Where else do absolutely essential, proven cures for deadly diseases only get mention when used for fundraising, and never in the course of regular programming, even when the subject is one of these diseases? Where else do you find a clarion call to avoid the police, even if your aura has been stolen? I could go on, but ... :)
DeleteSince the left loves whistle blowers so much, someone at WBAI should gather up documents, go to the authorities and/or press and become a whistle blower themselves, if anyone at WBAI has the guts. The Pacifica Papers.
DeleteI still stand by an old post of mine where I said WBAI should be a reality TV show. I think it would beat out a sitcom like WKRP any day.
SDL
The Left loves whistle blowers conditionally, just as they do their murderers and terrorists. WBAI does not honestly reflect the Left, for it is mired in racism and, as I recall, the Left's anti-racism activity goes back to the early part of the 20th century. WBAI loved Pete Seeger, but he surely did not love their ways.
DeleteI agree that someone ought to start collecting the "Pacifica Papers", record eyewitness accounts, etc.
A reality show about people who shiver at the mere mention of reality? Interesting. The way things are escalating, Mimi should soon be working under cork, as the old vaudevillians used to say and, taking a tip from Bob Fass, the station's hiring policies will change: token whites, none too smart, and people who once played theatrical roles as broadcasters. Fass himself will of course continue his rapid fade to transparency.
Sitcom? Try adding an "h" in the obvious place. :)
I was using the term "left" very loosely, of course, as a common identifier. I have stated before that I don't consider WBAI to be left wing, at all. I have coined the term "ghetto politik" to identify what they represent politically: a self-serving, self-aggrandizing profiteering under the guise of claiming victimization via political and economic repression and racism. Sadly, a perfect pseudo-political ideal for our time.
DeleteMimi? She'll probably just end up in a mental ward, talking to herself all day. I'm convinced she's an automaton, anyway.
Fass has already faded into obscurity. If he faded anymore, he'd be The Invisible Man. I actually thought it would be funny to get the two crackpot octogenarian talk show hosts together for a show: Bob & Barry (Bob Fass and Barry Farber). However, I realized Farber would have no reason to do a show with a nobody.
Anyway, I heard someone already refer to The Malaysian Triangle today. Yes, nevermind that one plane was shot down over Ukraine. Metaphysical nuts don't deal with evidence. It's actually considered proper etiquette NOT to question any claims, regardless how absurd.
SDL
Your description of ghetto politik is good (as is the term). Reminds me of a cover story I wrote on Benny Goodman for Stereo Review. It caught the eye of the U.S. Information Agency, a government agency that published a propaganda laden magazine for Russian consumption (I think it was called U.S.A. Today—the USSR had an equivalent). The USIA people wanted permission to print my article in their propaganda mag, but with a few changes, which they sent me. One of these was the removal of the word, ghetto (as in where Benny was born). It gave me immense pleasure to return their letter and attachment with "Permission Denied" written across the first page.
DeleteMimi? Well, she has a problem. Clarinetist/bandleader Mezz Messrow, who was Jewish, used to refer to himself as a "voluntary Negro," but at least he left behind much memorable music-what will Mimi leave in her wake?
I haven't heard Barry in many a moon, didn't even know that he was still around, but a Farber and Fass show would be cruel punishment for all concerned.
Malaysian Triangle, eh? Guess that was inevitable. I read in a Danish newspaper that a respected source theorizes that the plane that disappeared near Australia may have been shot down by the U.S. for coming too close to a base we have down there. This newspaper is old and venerated, not the kind Brady might look at. I don't think this possibility has been bandied about here, but WBAI would love it and waste no time tying it to Michelle Obama and the girls, with help from white members of the NYPD.
Brady, of course,will be convinced that this adds 162 auras to the 239 already stolen from flight MH-370 last March. Bob Fass will tell it like it was, based upon his having once played an Asian pilot in an off-Broadway show.
Ah, yes, the USIA. During my peak years of shortwave listening, in my teens, I received some English language magazine from them once, out of nowhere. I probably got on some mailing list for Voice of America reception reporting or something. Needless to say, the magazine was crap. I also would be sent English language propaganda rags here and there from communist countries, again due to my sending reception reports, probably. I was quite the QSL card/letter collector. Still have them all, in fact.
DeleteYeah, Farber is still flapping his lips on some internet radio station. Some people never retire.
Concerning planes these days, there is a new general paradigm - their computers get hacked and they are forcefully landed on some remote island. Yes, disappearing planes have entered the cyber age. No. no evidence is provided to back the hypothesis. No, I don't know if the carnivorous reptilians eat the passangers. It seems you can't go a minute these days without a conspiracy being laid out to answer everything.
Did Fass ever play a washed up talk show host in a play? He seems to know ALL about that role...
SDL
I don't think Bob had such a role on stage, but he has played it on the radio for many years now and has it down to perfection--or should that be perfect imperfection?
DeleteI joke about it,but it's quite sad that he so fool/selfishly threw away a winnin hand.
An AG's job is tough. So, I would suggest sending #5 on the list as a video rather than a printed document. It might be more entertaining than professional wrestling, and provide more schadenfreude than a boxing match or NHL or NFL game.
ReplyDeleteYes, I bet even the AG's people like action packed mêlées!
DeleteChecked the Pacifica Waves Petty Bickering list this morning to see that I made some, um, waves, even if indirectly. I guess the truth hurts, and not in a good way. I also discovered from one clairvoyant that I am just spam and don't seem to exist. I'll tell my landlord that when the bill comes and let you know the result.
ReplyDeleteOh, posted a follow up on the blueboard. The lynching party should be getting into full gear now...
SpamDL (who doesn't really exist)
Truth hurts when it contradicts the fantasy you cherish, SDL. One of my posts on Facebook is demonstrating that as I speak/post. That one has to do with another station's perceived untouchable. :)
Delete